Judges 5:20
"The stars in their courses fought"
Every witness checked has the stars fighting from heaven against Sisera. The question is not the text but what the poetry means: divine-warrior imagery, a storm, or something more literal.
Stable text: no manuscript differences in meaning
The family tree
Each row is a language or text tradition. Witnesses in the same row may share ancestry, revise one another, or have an uncertain relationship; the line under each box says which. A solid arrow appears only where direct copying or a documented revised edition is established. Order by date never implies copying. Scroll sideways on a phone.
✓ contains this verse · ▢ pages lost · – no copy survives
- Same line, through lost copies
- Translation
Readings
- Divine warrior
- God's heavenly army fights for Israel (compare Joshua 10:11–13; Habakkuk 3:11).
- Storm
- Rain from heaven flooded the Kishon (5:4, 21); the stars stand for the powers behind the weather.
- Astrology
- Some see an allusion to stars as omens; the ancient translations both stress the stars kept their courses.
- Modern speculation
- Readings of a sky battle or craft have no ancient or archaeological support.
Every witness, in order
Unknown (debated)
Original Judges
No original survives.
Translated c. 2nd century BC
Septuagint (library text: Giguet's French)
How the site knows this: Known here only through a translation.
Les étoiles, du haut du ciel, ont pris part à la lutte, sans quitter leurs voies
The stars, from high heaven, took part in the fight, without leaving their paths
One Greek text via Giguet's French; Greek A and B not checked separately.
c. AD 400
Jerome's Vulgate
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Clementine Vulgate (1592 edition).
De cælo dimicatum est contra eos: stellæ manentes in ordine et cursu suo
From heaven they fought against them: the stars, remaining in their order and course
Jerome, like the Greek, stresses that the stars stayed in their courses.
AD 1008
Masoretic Text (Leningrad Codex)
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: Westminster Leningrad Codex, a digital transcription of the Leningrad Codex.
מִן־שָׁמַיִם נִלְחָמוּ הַכּוֹכָבִים מִמְּסִלּוֹתָם נִלְחֲמוּ עִם־סִיסְרָא
From heaven fought the stars; from their highways they fought with Sisera
mesillot: highways, courses.
1611
King James Bible
How the site knows this: Read in the site's library text: King James Version (1769 text).
They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.
Follows the Hebrew.
What changed, and why
That Greek and Latin both add that the stars did not leave their paths may reflect an early concern to avoid reading the verse as stars falling or wandering.
What the evidence shows
- The witnesses checked agree on the wording of 5:20.
- The verse describes an unusual sky event.
Sources
Related lessons
- The Song of Deborah →Deborah and Barak sing the victory: God marches from Seir, the earth trembles, the tribes are summoned and some stay home, the stars fight, the Kishon sweeps the enemy away, Jael is blessed, and Sisera's mother waits at her window for a son who will not return. It may be one of the oldest poems in the Bible; scholars disagree.
- Journey of a Passage: Ancient Judges Texts →A guide to the passages in Judges where ancient copies and translations differ, or where the difference is between two compositions rather than two copies. Each has its own passage page with the witnesses laid out side by side.